SOURCE: Woodward, Kenneth L. “A Visit to Quindlenland.” Commonweal 120, no. 10 (21 May 1993): 17-19.

In the following review, Woodward argues that Quindlen does not provide facts to support her assertions in the columns collected in Thinking Out Loud.

The eighty-seven pieces collected [in Thinking Out Loud] are culled from Anna Quindlen's op-ed columns in the New York Times, written between 1990 and 1992, and for which she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for commentary last year. To these she has added not only an introduction about herself and her approach to column writing, but also prefaces to each of the book's four sections explaining what she's up to—in case, I suppose, we just don't get it.

In her introduction, Quindlen reflects on her life and good fortune as a journalist. She is up-front about why she thinks she was hired, at the age of twenty-four, by the Times. It was, she...